Tag: MSL

If you’re like me, you hang off every news release and new photo from our tenacious Mars rover Curiosity. The awesome one-ton, six-wheeled robot is, after all, exploring a very alien landscape. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from the mission, Mars is far from being a truly alien place. Sure, we can’t breath the thin frigid air, but we can certainly recognize similar geological processes that we have on Earth, and, most intriguingly, regions that would have once been habitable for life as we know it. This doesn’t mean there was life, just that once upon a time parts of Gale Crater would have been pretty cozy for terrestrial microbes. Personally, I find that notion fascinating.

But, way back in May, I noticed something awry with our beloved rover’s wheels. Curiosity’s beautiful aircraft-grade aluminum wheels were looking rather beaten up. Punctures had appeared. Fearing the worst I reached out to NASA to find out what was going on. After a friendly email exchange with lead rover driver Matt Heverly, I felt a lot more at ease: The damage was predicted; dings, scratches, even holes were expected to appear in the thinnest (0.75 mm thick) aluminum between the treads. On Mars, after all, there is no asphalt. Also, erosion is a slower-paced affair in the thin winds and dry environment — sharp, fractured rocks protrude, embedding themselves into the wheels at every slow turn.

Then, on Friday, in a news update on Curiosity’s progress, JPL scientists mentioned that they would be commanding the rover to drive over a comparatively smooth patch to evaluate the condition of the wheels as their condition is getting worse. But isn’t that to be expected? Apparently not to this degree. “Dents and holes were anticipated, but the amount of wear appears to have accelerated in the past month or so,” said Jim Erickson, project manager for the NASA Mars Science Laboratory at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

So what are we looking at here?

Curiosity’s front-left wheel on Sol 177. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Curiosity’s front-left wheel on Sol 488. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

All of the wheels are exhibiting wear and tear, but this particular ‘rip’ in aluminum is by far the most dramatic. But what does that mean for Curiosity? We’ll have to wait and see once JPL engineers have assessed their condition. Although this kind of damage has inevitably been worked into the the structural equations for the wheels’ load-bearing capabilities, whichever way you look at it, damage like this is not good — especially as Curiosity hasn’t even roved three miles yet.

But in the spirit of Mars exploration, Curiosity will soldier on regardless of how rough the red planet treats her.

Read more in my coverage on Discovery News, a location you’ll find me during most daylight (and many nighttime) hours:

As NASA has been shuttered by the insane U.S. government shutdown, there’s been little in the way of news releases from NASA (site offline) or NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (site still online, but no recent updates posted). In this Mars Science Laboratory science lull, I’ve found myself obsessively trawling the mission’s raw image archive so I can get my fix of high-resolution imagery from Curiosity’s ongoing mission inside Gale Crater.

While getting lost in the Martian landscape once more, I started tinkering with Curiosity’s raw photos; zooming in, adjusting the contrast, brightness and color. One thing led to another and I found myself stitching together various photos from the rover’s Mastcam camera. Being awash with photographs with little professional insight from mission scientists (as, you know, a noisy minority at Capitol Hill has gagged them by starving the agency of funds), I started to tinker in Photoshop, blindly trying to stitch a selection of Mastcam photos together to see an updated Martian panorama once more. This is the result.

Of particular interest, I found myself staring at the precariously-shaped boulder to the far right of the panorama. I can only guess what geological processes shaped it that way — Wind action? Ancient water flow? — or whether it had simply landed that way after getting blasted from an impact crater, but I was curious as to what JPL mission scientists are making of it. Alas, we’ll have to wait a little longer for the awesome Mars science to begin flowing again.

Here’s that rock:

It felt nice to be absorbed in the Mars landscape again. The photo stitching is rough in places (by far the hardest task was getting the brightness and contrast correct in each photo) and I lack any calibration tools to ensure the color is correct or that the orientation is sound, but it satisfied my curiosity as to what Curiosity was up to on the Red Planet. It has, after all, been over a year since the historic landing of the NASA mission and the regular news updates from NASA and JPL have become something of an intellectual opiate.

UPDATE 1:That whole thing I said in my Al Jazeera English op-ed about being blinkered on the organics explanation for the “big” news on Monday? Well, case in point, as tweeted by @MarsToday on Sunday night, perhaps Curiosity has discovered further evidence for perchlorates on Mars. I have no clue where this information is sourced, and I’m not going to speculate any more, but if perchlorates have been discovered in Gale Crater, it would support the findings of NASA’s 2008 Mars Phoenix lander findings of perchlorate and possible liquid water brine in the arctic regions of the Red Planet. Place your bets…

Over the last bizarre few days, a key NASA scientist (almost) spilled the beans on a “historic” discovery by the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover Curiosity. Then, speculation ran wild. Had NASA’s newest Mars surface mission discovered organics? Feeling the need to stamp out the glowing embers of organic excitement ahead of the Dec. 3 AGU press conference, NASA said that there would be no big announcement on Monday. But then the agency went even further, issuing a terse statement to point out that the speculation is wrong. “At this point in the mission, the instruments on the rover have not detected any definitive evidence of Martian organics,” said NASA.

So now we’re left, understandably, wondering what lead MSL scientist John Grotzinger was referring to. I think it’s safe to assume that he wasn’t misquoted by the NPR journalist who happened to be sitting in his office when the MSL team was receiving data from the mission’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument. And if we take NASA’s damage-controlling statements at face value, Grotzinger was just getting excited for all the data being received from the rover — after all, the entire mission is historic.

As a science media guy with a background in science, I totally ‘get’ what the MSL team are going through. Scientists are only human and whether or not Grotzinger was getting excited for a specific “historic” find or just getting generally excited for all the “historic” data streaming from the rover, is irrelevant. Perhaps he should have been more careful as to the language he used when having an NPR reporter sitting in the same room as him, but that’s academic, I’m pretty sure that if I was leading the most awesome Mars mission in the history of Mars missions I’d be brimming over with excitement too. The scientific process is long and can often seem labored and secretive to the media and public — rumors or a few slipped words from scientists is often all that’s needed to spawn the hype. But for the scientific process to see its course, data needs to be analyzed, re-analyzed and theories need to be formulated. In an announcement as important as “organics on Mars,” the science needs to be watertight.

However, I can’t help but feel that, in NASA’s enthusiasm to “keep the lid” on speculation, that they are setting themselves up for a backlash on Monday.

If the AGU press conference is just “an update about first use of the rover’s full array of analytical instruments to investigate a drift of sandy soil,” as the NASA statement says, won’t there be any mention of organics? Will this be a similar announcement to the sampling of Mars air in the search for methane? The upshot of that Nov. 2 press conference was that the Mars air had been tested by SAM and no methane (within experimental limits) had been discovered… yet. But this was a sideline to the announcement of some incredible science as to the evolution of the Martian atmosphere.

This time, although there may not be “definitive,” absolute, watertight proof of organics, might mission scientists announce the detection of something that appears to be organics… “but more work is needed”? It’s a Catch 22: It’s not the “historic” news as the experiment is ongoing pending a rock-solid conclusion; yet it IS “historic” as the mere hint of a detection would bolster the organics experiments of the Viking landers in the 1970s and could hint at the discovery of another piece of the “Mars life puzzle.” And besides, everything Curiosity does is “historic.”

In NASA’s haste to damper speculation, have they cornered themselves into not making any big announcements on Monday? Or have they only added to the speculation, bolstering the media’s attention? Besides, I get the feeling that the media will see any announcement as a “big” announcement regardless of NASA scientists’ intent. Either way, it’s a shame that the hype may distract from the incredible science the MSL team are carrying out every single day.

Meanwhile, in deep space, a little probe launched 35 years ago is edging into the interstellar medium and NASA’s Voyager Program team are also holding an AGU press conference on Monday. Although there have been no NPR journalists getting the scoop from mission scientists, it’s worth keeping in mind that Voyager 1 really is about to make history. In October, I reported that the particle detectors aboard the aging spacecraft detected something weird in the outermost reaches of the Solar System. As Voyager 1 ventures deep into the heliosheith — the outermost component of the heliosphere (the Sun’s sphere of influence) — it detected inexplicable high-energy particles. The theory is that these particles are being accelerated by the magnetic mess that is the outermost reaches of the Solar System. But there is growing evidence in particle detections and magnetometer readings that the probe may have just left the Solar System, completely escaping the heliosphere.

A big hint is in the following graphs of data streaming from Voyager 1. The first plot shows the increase in high-energy cosmic ray particle counts. These high-energy particles typically originate from beyond the heliosphere. The bottom plot shows lower-energy particles that originate from the solar wind. Note how the lower-energy particle counts fell off a cliff this summer, and how the high-energy particles have seen a marked increase at around the same period:

So, in light of the media-centric Curiosity debate over what is “historic” and what’s not “historic” enough to be announced at conferences, I’m getting increasingly excited for what the Voyager team have got to say tomorrow. It’s inevitable that Voyager 1 will leave the Solar System, but will NASA call it at the AGU? Who knows, but that would be historic, just without the hype.

As the sols march on, NASA’s brand new nuclear-powered rover Curiosity has detected a dramatic change in its surrounding atmosphere. A once-clear vista of the distant rim of Gale Crater now looks smoggy — almost like the gray-brown-yellow stuff that hangs above Los Angeles on a hot summer’s day. So what’s causing this change in opacity?

As can be seen in the above global view of Mars, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took a near-continuous observation of the planet on Nov. 18 with its Mars Color Imager. The mosaic has picked out an assortment of geographical features, but there’s one rather ominous atmospheric feature (white arrows) that grabbed the attention of Malin Space Science Systems’ Bruce Cantor.

A regional dust storm is brewing and Cantor first observed the storm on Nov. 10. He reported the detection to NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover team who manage Opportunity. Although the storm is over 800 miles from the tenacious rover, dust storms are of a concern for any solar powered surface mission, especially for a rover that has outlived its expected mission lifetime by several years. Opportunity’s solar panels are already covered in dust, so should there be an additional dip in sunlight due to a dusty atmosphere there could be an impact on its mission. Additional dust layers on the panels wouldn’t help either.

Opportunity does not have a weather station, but its cameras have detected a slight drop in atmospheric clarity. Curiosity, on the other hand, does have a weather station — called the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) — and has been closely monitoring the atmospheric variability over the last few days, detecting a decreased air pressure and a slight rise in overnight low temperature. This is in addition to the dramatic loss in visibility. In short, it sounds like Curiosity can sense a storm in the air.

Six Navcam images pointed toward the horizon taken over the course of Curiosity’s time near Rocknest document changes in the transparency of the atmosphere. NASA/JPL/ Egorov Vitaly (“Zelenyikot”)

“This is now a regional dust storm. It has covered a fairly extensive region with its dust haze, and it is in a part of the planet where some regional storms in the past have grown into global dust hazes,” said Rich Zurek, chief Mars scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “For the first time since the Viking missions of the 1970s, we are studying a regional dust storm both from orbit and with a weather station on the surface.”

Now this is the cool bit. We currently have an armada of Mars orbiters, plus two generations of Mars rovers doing groundbreaking work on opposite sides of the red planet. We are in an unprecedented age of planetary exploration where a network of robots all work in concert to aid our understanding of how the planet works. In this case, local weather changes are being observed around two surface missions while corroborating data is being gathered hundreds of miles overhead.

Starting on Nov. 16, the Mars Climate Sounder instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter detected a warming of the atmosphere at about 16 miles (25 kilometers) above the storm. Since then, the atmosphere in the region has warmed by about 45 degrees Fahrenheit (25 degrees Celsius). This is due to the dust absorbing sunlight at that height, so it indicates the dust is being lofted well above the surface and the winds are starting to create a dust haze over a broad region.

Warmer temperatures are seen not only in the dustier atmosphere in the south, but also in a hot spot near northern polar latitudes due to changes in the atmospheric circulation. Similar changes affect the pressure measured by Curiosity even though the dust haze is still far away.

We’re monitoring weather on another planet people! If that’s not mind-blowing, I don’t know what is.

Note: Apologies for the Astroengine.com hiatus, I’ve been somewhat distracted with writing duties at Discovery News and Al Jazeera English. If you’re ever wondering where I’ve disappeared to, check in on my Twitter feed, I tweet a lot!

Late on Sunday night, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) website had a surprise in store: Curiosity’s recently un-capped robotic arm-mounted Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) snapped some incredible photographs of the rover’s undercarriage and its calibration target. Shown above is my favorite pic, detailing dust on two of the rover’s wheels. Shown below is an image of Curiosity’s set of front Hazcams (left and right pairs).

Although the dust cap has been in place up until now, the camera was used to grab Curiosity’s first fuzzy color landscape pic and, only last night, it was used to snap a fuzzy “self portrait” of Curiosity’s “head” — but that was achieved by looking through the semi-transparent dust cap still attached to the lens. Today, the very first crystal-clear “open” MAHLI image has been acquired after mission controllers sent the command for the re-closable dust cap to swing open. The picture shows a patch of Mars dirt next to the rover measuring about 86 centimeters across. The large pebble at the bottom of the frame is about 8 cm wide.

This may be a very preliminary image, but the MSL team are already using it to do science. “Notice that the ground immediately around that pebble has less dust visible (more gravel exposed) than in other parts of the image,” says the image description on the MSL mission site. “The presence of the pebble may have affected the wind in a way that preferentially removes dust from the surface around it.”

The left eye of the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity took this image of the camera on the rover’s arm, the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), during the 30th sol of the rover’s mission on Mars (Sept. 5, 2012).

During the Sept. 6 press conference from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission scientists discussed updates from Curiosity’s progress in Gale Crater. It’s hard to keep up with the incredible deluge of images and scientific data as the six-wheeled rover roves toward its first target — a geologically interesting location called “Glenelg.” Mission managers hope to use Curiosity’s drill for the first time when the rover arrives. Expect mission updates and some pretty cool photos to appear on Discovery News throughout the day.

There was one photograph, however, imaged by the rover’s Mastcam that was showcased in today’s briefing that fascinated me. Shown above, the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) can be seen on the rover’s robotic arm (with dust cap still in place). All the instrumentation and wiring has a very cool Steampunk-esque quality to it.

When I “met” Curiosity at the JPL clean room last year, I was also fascinated by its ugly functionality. By “ugly,” I don’t mean repulsive, I actually fell in love with the robot that day. But with any space mission, function succeeds form and Curiosity is no different. Instruments jut out from a central box; cables snake over all surfaces; gold and silver components are scattered across the deck like opulent jewels; and the whole thing is supported by some seriously heavy duty wheels that wouldn’t look out of place attached to a Bentley cruising through Los Angeles.

Back then, I stared at the Mars exploration machine, whose one purpose is to do science in an alien land, and thought how alien the thing looked. But in all the ugliness of an apparently random assortment of instrumentation, Curiosity has an undeniably beautiful character. Also, it has a WALL-E-like “head” in the form of the blocky ChemCam atop its mast. And now I know what its character is after seeing this latest robotic arm photo; it’s a creation that wouldn’t look out of place in a Steampunk museum or imagined in a H. G. Wells novel. However, this isn’t sci-fi, this is real. We have a nuclear-powered rover on Mars. Sometimes it’s too hard to put such awesomeness into words.

The laser-zapped rock “Coronation” — inset image was taken by the ChemCam instrument, featuring the small laser burn. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

After Mars rover Curiosity’s thunderous landing on Aug. 5/6, any hypothetical Martian on the surface would have been forgiven for being a little confused.

Setting down on the flat plain called Aeolis Palus inside Gale Crater, the six-wheeled, one-ton, nuclear-powered rover would have looked more like an alien battle tank being dropped off by a rather ominous-looking “Flying Saucer” than a scientific mission. But after the famous “sky crane” maneuver that lowered the rover with the precision of a Harrier Jump Jet, the “alien” robot didn’t start rolling over the Martian landscape zapping Mars rocks with its laser. Instead, it just sat there. For days. Occasionally there’d be a bit of action — such as Curiosity’s cameras swiveling, mast raising and high-gain antenna tracking the sky — but apart from that, our hypothetical Martians would probably not have thought much of this lack-luster invasion by an airdropped tank.

But that all changed today. Curiosity blasted a rock with its laser, marking the beginning of Curiosity’s Mars domination! Shock and awe, Mars rover style.

Alas, this isn’t a military exercise, but it is significant. Today marks the first day that one of our interplanetary robotic emissaries have used a laser on another planet in the name of science. NASA mission operators gave the go-ahead to carry out a test-run of the Chemistry and Camera instrument, or ChemCam, targeting a small rock (called “Coronation”) with 30 pulses of its laser over a 10-second period. According to the JPL press release, each pulse delivered more than a million watts of power for about five one-billionths of a second.

The fist-sized Mars rock — called “Coronation”, previously designated “N165” — has become the first casualty of war scientific target of Curiosity’s ChemCam instrument. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

“We got a great spectrum of Coronation — lots of signal,” said ChemCam Principal Investigator Roger Wiens of Los Alamos National Laboratory, N.M. “Our team is both thrilled and working hard, looking at the results. After eight years building the instrument, it’s payoff time!”

The laser works by vaporizing the surface layers of exposed rock. Under the intense heating by such focused energy, a tiny sample of material rapidly turns into plasma. The the flash of light generated by the small, rapidly dissipating cloud of plasma can then by analyzed from afar by the ChemCam’s spectrometer. The light reveals what kinds of elements are contained in the sample, aiding Curiosity’s studies of the Red Planet. And the best thing is that ChemCam appears to be working better than expected.

“It’s surprising that the data are even better than we ever had during tests on Earth, in signal-to-noise ratio,” said ChemCam Deputy Project Scientist Sylvestre Maurice of the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planetologie (IRAP) in Toulouse, France. “It’s so rich, we can expect great science from investigating what might be thousands of targets with ChemCam in the next two years.”

Rocks and regolith strewn over the ground near Mars rover Curiosity. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

It looks like rocks and dust, right? Actually, it resembles the dusty parking lot near a beach where my family used to holiday when I was young — a sandy, ruddy, dusty patch devoid of grass where cars had worn down the top layer of dirt, exposing smoothed rock underneath. However, this isn’t a parking lot. Actually, scrub that, it IS a parking lot — Mars rover Curiosity’s parking lot in Aeolis Palus, a remarkably smooth plain inside Gale Crater on Mars.

As Curiosity undergoes a software upgrade preparing it for surface operations, we’ve been patiently waiting for the mission site to upload new images (beyond the color thumbnail teasers) of the surrounding area. And it seems that on Saturday night that happened. Here are some of my favorite views from Curiosity’s Mastcam:

Curiosity’s sundial on its deck reads: “Mars 2012 — To Mars To Explore”Discoloration in the top soil in the location of a crater formed by Curiosity’s Sky Crane rockets. Credit: NASA/JPL-CaltechThe deployed high-gain antenna. Credit: NASA/JPL-CaltechThe crater rim and detail of undulating terrain — possibly dunes. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The view through Curiosity’s left (A) and right (A) Navcams, looking down on the deck of the rover. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech (levels adjusted)

UPDATE (Aug. 9, 2012): During Thursday’s NASA press briefing, I asked MSL mission manager Mike Watkins about the likely impact the debris atop the rover may have on the mission. Although the debris was unexpected, it’s not thought to affect any of the rover’s instrumentation. Read more on Discovery News: “Unexpected Debris atop Curiosity Not a Problem.“

On Sol 2 of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission, we’re certainly not short of new things to look at. Early on Wednesday, the JPL team released images from the rover’s raised mast. Atop the mast is the blocky ChemCam laser, two Mastcams and four Navcams — a collection of equipment that is colloquially referred to as the rover’s “head.” As soon as the mast was deployed, mission controllers switched on the Navcams and commanded Curiosity to look around its new home.

During Curiosity’s descent and landing on Sunday night, the famous Sky Crane maneuver was used to lower the rover to the surface. In doing so, the rockets attached to the platform blew away the surface layers of regolith and small rocks, exposing what appears to be bedrock. The craters generated by the rocket thrust is clearly seen in a couple of Navcam images. Although dust was bound to be thrown into the air, inevitably settling on the rover, small rocks also appear to have been blasted onto the rover’s deck. The largest rock pieces appear to be no bigger than the size of a dime — when comparing them with the dimensions of the Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) instrument (in the top left of both frames in the image above). The RAD’s circular “window” is roughly the size of a coaster.

Could the small rocks cause issues with the operation of instrumentation mounted on the rover’s deck? Were they expected to be blown from the ground onto the deck? It will be interesting to hear what will be discussed by the MSL team during Thursday’s 10 a.m. PDT press briefing.

The high-gain antenna that will be used for direct communication with Earth is operational. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech (levels adjusted)Curiosity’s wheels as imaged by Navcam Left A. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech (levels adjusted)